Connecticut produced a learned pig which could read; New York, not to be outdone, exhibits some educated donkeys that can write, that can even edit newspapers, have done it, have been caught in the very act, and, alas, seem inclined to boast of it. When such things can be, and overcome us like a summer sunshade, why marvel that the navy had no Sutler? If a shattered and battered son of the sea comes forward now and then to bask in the glow of that comradeship we so fondly cherish, let us bid him jolly welcome. In that long period which elapsed between the dates when President Jefferson Davis was captured in confidential costume and President Grover Cleveland escaped from the congressional trocha, our people were steadily but very slowly growing to an appreciation of their numerous blessings. During this period many a stranded ex-sailor found himself filled with the vague unrest of a rural legislator who for the first time carries a railroad pass in his pocket. The yearning for travel was irresistable. He has thus projected himself into the sphere of our observation as far inland as Indianapolis or Omaha. If we have not seized the opportunity to thank him for Hampton Roads, and Mobile Bay, and Fort Saint Phillip and Pittsburg Landing and Fort Fisher, for New Orleans and Pensacola and Galveston, we have ignored a binding obligation and neglected a golden opportunity. Let us ignore, neglect no longer. We yield him full measure of credit. We regret more than words can express that he never enjoyed the felicity of having a Sutler. If one were accessible he should be introduced to him, even now! The impression which seems to be somewhat currently prevalent, in circles usually well informed on financial topics, that many of the largest fortunes of our present era were founded on the war-profits of army Sutlers, is manifestly erroneous. It is at all times easier to get poor in a minute than rich in a month, according to one of the wise saws of the transcendental orientals. The wealthy widow who has wasted her substance in riotous trolley parties can verify it. Fortunes have originated in the profits of army contracts, judiciously invested in well-slanted real estate at Pittsburg or Cincinnati. Their inheritors have perhaps reached congress where they speak speeches prescribed for them by a scrivener. Upon the condemned horses of the thrifty quartermaster, or sunken cargoes of costly oats duly accounted for by economical commissaries, mysteriously materializing later in tangible cash, large estates have been based. They were mostly dissipated thereafter by extensive land-purchases in remote regions notable chiefly for a particularly brazen sky and a specially mean annual temperature, where the prairie dog yelps to his or her mate as the case may be, sole disturbers of all the dismal silence in nature's vast immensity.